Arrowood

by Laura McHugh

  Something that wants to be found. I felt a chill down the back of my neck. I thought of my sisters’ small bodies sinking into the river. If they were there, I’d never find them.

  “Your Ace of Wands card tells me that you need to follow your intuition. You need to trust yourself. Listen to your gut. When you don’t know what to believe, remember that the truth comes from within.” She began to gather up the cards, expertly slicing them together and tapping them into a neat stack. “I don’t know whether you’ll get the answers you want,” she said, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. “But you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”

  —

  The auction was under way when I returned. Ben was hamming it up, trying and failing to yodel like a real auctioneer. The wheat-haired girl was standing off to the side, laughing along with the crowd of bidders, and as she turned her head in my direction, the moonlight illuminated her face and I realized that I knew her. Lauren had said Ben’s girlfriend’s name was Courtney, and the girl watching Ben was a grown-up version of Courtney Wells. I remembered her from the pool, part of a clique of girls who were shaving their legs and wearing mascara the summer after sixth grade, while Ben and I were still waiting for our bodies to change. I remembered smiling at her in the pool locker room and Courtney averting her eyes, rendering me invisible.

  “Hi, Arden.” Josh was standing in front of me. He wore his standard windbreaker and cap, and he cradled a pumpkin in his arms. Even with the candle extinguished, I could tell it was the Arrowood jack-o’-lantern.

  “This is for you. Got into a bit of a bidding war, and then it turned out the other guy was Dick Heaney, so I guess you would have gotten it either way.” He smiled sheepishly. “He seemed kind of pissed off that I beat him. Anyway, I was going to leave it on your porch, but now here you are.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Thanks. I might be walking home, though, and I’m not sure I want to carry it all the way back.” I wasn’t sure I wanted it at all.

  “No problem,” he said. “I can drive you. I was ready to go anyway. I mean, if you are. Or we could hang out here for a while if you want.”

  I looked over at Ben. Courtney was watching him attentively, an easy smile on her face, her long hair fluttering in the breeze. We’re so happy, I imagined her telling her friends. There were still a dozen jack-o’-lanterns on the table.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  I texted Ben to let him know not to wait around for me. When Josh and I got back to Arrowood, he carried the pumpkin up the front steps and set it on the porch.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For the jack-o’-lantern. And the ride.”

  “You’re welcome.” He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. I got out my house key and reached for the door.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was hoping we could talk for a minute. Could I maybe…come in?”

  I hadn’t had any guests at the house since I’d moved back, aside from Heaney. Josh would be the first.

  “Sure.” I unlocked the door and we walked in. I paused in the entry, not certain that I wanted to let him in any farther than that, but it felt awkward standing there, so I led him to the drawing room at the back of the house and turned on the lights. He sat in one of Granddad’s old leather armchairs, and I sat on the sofa.

  “This is quite a house,” Josh said, glancing around the room. I hoped he hadn’t wanted to come inside just to get a peek at the interior for the sake of his book.

  “What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

  He looked at me and swallowed hard, cracking the knuckles of one hand and then the other. I was used to his straightforward manner, not holding anything back to spare my feelings, and now I worried that he seemed to be hesitating, gauging my ability to take in what he was about to say. “I tracked down one of Singer’s old neighbors, at a nursing home over the river in Hamilton. Jean Shirley. She lived across the street from him. I asked her if she ever knew Singer to have a dog, and she said yes, he had an enormous Rottweiler back then. She remembered because the dog would run loose, and it would come across the street and scare her dog.” He paused and adjusted his glasses. “I asked if she’d ever seen him with a little white dog, and she said no, but that her dog, the one Singer’s dog was always harassing, was a white-haired Maltese.”

  My teeth ground together while I waited for him to continue. I already knew what he was going to say.

  “Her dog went missing just before Labor Day. She couldn’t remember the year, but she said it was right around the time of the Arrowood kidnapping.”

  My chest felt tight, like a balloon was expanding inside it, making it hard to breathe. “You think he stole her dog, and he had it with him that day.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do. It all fits. It makes sense.”

  I didn’t want it to be true, but he was right. It didn’t seem like a coincidence. I ran the movie in my head, the door slamming, the flash of white, the car driving off.

  “There’s something else.” Josh shifted in his chair. “I have some interest from a small press, for my book. They were thinking it could draw a bit of media attention if they schedule the release to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the kidnapping, and that would give me plenty of time to finish it. It’s all riding on the theory that Singer wasn’t involved like everyone thought he was.” I sat there, not saying anything, waiting for him to continue. “That really opens the whole case back up again, makes it fresh,” he said. “In a way, it’s more of a mystery than ever, but with the chance to look at it from new angles that might lead to it being solved. That’s how I pitched it, anyway.”

  He stopped and looked up at me, apologetic and expectant. His face was flushed, and it was obvious that he was excited by the new developments, and probably hoped that I would be excited, too. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay with it,” he said. “With the book, with telling people you were wrong about what you saw, that you no longer believe Singer took them.”

  I didn’t care if he told the world I was wrong about Singer. What was devastating was the realization that I had been the one to throw the investigation off track from the beginning. Now that it seemed Singer hadn’t taken the twins, I had to accept that there was something missing from my recollection of that day. In my head was a movie that had played over and over for nearly twenty years. What other parts had I gotten wrong? The truth had been revised by memory, my imperfect recollection the only version that remained.

  “It’s your book,” I said. “Do what you want.”

  “I really think something good will come out of this, even if I’m not the one to solve it,” he said. “Maybe somebody knows something, and they’ll come forward. I want the answers as much as you do.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I’m sorry, Arden, I didn’t mean—you know what I mean. I want to know what happened. Not for the same reasons, exactly, but I want it for you, too.”

  “I know,” I said. “Do whatever you need to do. It’s fine with me.”

  I walked him to the door and told him good night. He reached out, his hand on my arm, his fingers curving around to the underside, where my scars hid beneath my sweater. I froze. We stood there, tenuously connected, the barely perceptible weight of his touch somehow swaying me off balance.

  “I’ll keep you in the loop,” he said. “Talk to you soon.”

  I pushed the door shut behind him and locked it. Josh was being nice, asking for my permission, which he didn’t need, before moving forward with the book and exposing my mistake. He was doing everything he could to solve the mystery of my sisters’ disappearance, regardless of whether he was doing it for himself or for me.

  I went to the kitchen and dug through the junk drawer until I found a book of matches I’d brought from Colorado. They were from a hotel bar called Paradise, where Dr. Endicott and I had sipped cloying, brightly colored cocktails while attending a conference in Denver. The drinks had made my stomach hurt, and the pain got worse as I rode the elevat
or up to my room and waited ten minutes, as instructed, before sneaking down the hall and tapping lightly on my adviser’s door.

  I held the matchbook in my teeth as I unlocked the front door and removed the singed lid from the jack-o’-lantern to light the candle. The wind blew out the first few matches as soon as I lit them. I huddled over the pumpkin with my back to the wind, cupping my hand around each newly struck flame, and still the candle would not light. On the last match, the wick flared and then went out. I threw the empty matchbook across the porch, tears of frustration blurring my eyes, and then the candle flickered on, all by itself. The flame held, and shadow ghosts wavered in the windows of the miniature Arrowood.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  “Please, please, please,” Lauren whined. “You have to come. Mom said she invited you.”

  “She didn’t invite me. She gave me a flyer when I was at your house. I don’t even know if she gave it to me on purpose.” I’d been surprised to get a call from Lauren, to hear that she was back in town so soon.

  “That counts,” she said. “I’m only going because I don’t have a choice—they’re honoring my mother, and God only knows what she would do to me if I didn’t show up and act like we’re the world’s happiest family. But you love that museum, I know you do, so why don’t you just come along and keep me company? Ben says he hardly sees you, that you barely leave the house.”

  “How would anyone but me know how often I leave my house?”

  She cleared her throat theatrically. “Mom spies on you, I think. It’s really hard to pretend you’re not home when everyone can see your car parked outside. Now go change into something nice. Or don’t. Mom’s the only one who’ll care.”

  The Miller House was all lit up when we arrived. The museum was the former home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Miller, now owned and operated by the Lee County historical society. All three stories of the painted brick Italianate, built in 1859, contained bits of Keokuk history, including an alcove filled with antique dental equipment to which Ferris Family Dental had contributed.

  Dr. and Mrs. Ferris and Ben were standing just beyond the rotunda entrance, near the portraits of Chief Keokuk and Justice Miller. I shook their hands, and Ben, who looked surprised to see me there, gave me a quick hug. Mrs. Ferris aimed a tight-lipped smile at Lauren, motioning for her to join the family receiving line next to her brother. “Don’t leave without me,” Lauren hissed, before taking her place in line.

  I wandered around the upper floors—the children’s playroom, the office, the walk-in closet, which was unusual for its time, with a pulley system for hanging items high on the wall. The closet shelves were filled with hatboxes from the days when five different millinery shops had operated on Main Street. I found two of Josh’s books in the first-floor gift shop: The Mark Family Massacre and Unsolved Iowa: A Collection of Cold Crimes. One day his Arrowood book would sit here along with the others. I wondered what the title would be, which picture might be used for the cover.

  I saved the basement for last, my favorite part. This was where the kitchen had been, and the laundry, and while it was the working portion of the house, it was every bit as spacious and beautifully detailed as the living quarters. The world’s largest denim overalls were on display in the laundry room, next to a framed article from the Daily Gate City about how the workers from the local Irwin-Phillips Company had sewn them for the “World’s Fattest Man.” Along with the article was a photo of four of the factory women standing inside the overalls, two in each leg.

  I hesitated before entering the small corner room, which housed a collection of portraits of well-known Keokuk homes. A cluster of people were blocking my view of the Arrowood exhibit, so I squeezed into the corner to look at the photos of the Hubinger Mansion, the finest, most expensive home ever built on Grand Avenue. Hubinger had made his fortune in elastic starch, and had spared no expense on the house—a three-story castle with twenty rooms—and grounds, which boasted a man-made lake with an island. The walls of his home had been covered not with wallpaper but with velvet and silk. All that remained of the house were pictures; it was hard to imagine a time of such opulence in Keokuk that a lavish mansion was torn down for another mansion to be erected in its place.

  The crowd around the Arrowood display broke up, and as they moved past me to exit the room, I came face-to-face with Courtney.

  “Hi!” she said brightly. “You’re Arden, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Courtney. Wells. Ben’s girlfriend?”

  “I know,” I said. “I remember you. From the pool, back in junior high.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Ben can’t shut up about how happy he is to have you back! You know they renovated the pool? It looks completely different now. Way better than it was back then.”

  “That’s great,” I said, thinking I would have liked it better if it hadn’t changed. “I’ll have to go see it.”

  “Yeah, you should.” She smiled awkwardly, nodding, her long hair swishing around her shoulders. “Well. I’d better get back upstairs. I just wanted to say hi.” She dug around in her little clutch purse. “And here’s my card. If you ever need a real estate agent, I work at Sutlive Real Estate. That’s how Ben and I—I helped him buy his house. I guess you’re probably not looking for a place at the moment, but if you ever want to sell Arrowood.”

  Courtney left, and I stood alone in front of the framed portraits and articles, staring at a plaque listing all the Arrowoods who had fought and died in wars, including my two uncles. I let Courtney’s card slip out of my hand and fall to the floor, and then, because I knew I was being childish, I quickly knelt and picked it back up.

  “Was it Franklin or Theodore?” Lauren sidled up to me. “I get them confused with the Chipmunks.”

  “What?”

  “Which Roosevelt stayed at my house? Someone just asked. Mom will die if I said the wrong one.”

  “Theodore,” I said, guiding her across the room to the picture of him standing in front of the Ferrises’ newly built carriage house. “And there is no Franklin in the Chipmunks. Maybe that will help you remember next time.”

  Lauren reached out and pressed her fingertip to Roosevelt’s face. “Doubt it.”

  “So what’s your mom doing with the carriage house these days?” I asked. At one point she had talked about using it as an office for an interior design business she never started. And now, of course, I knew it had been used to rendezvous with my father.

  “I don’t think she’s using it for anything,” Lauren said. “I couldn’t tell you the last time she was out there.”

  “Last week,” I said, suddenly remembering. “I saw her coming out. She looked right at me and then turned and rushed back to the house without saying anything.”

  Lauren scrunched up her face. “That’s kind of weird.”

  “I went to talk to her the other day,” I said, lowering my voice. “There’s this guy, he’s writing a book about the kidnapping, and he’s convinced it wasn’t Singer—”

  “Ben told me about it,” Lauren interrupted. “The guy from that website, right?”

  “Yes. He had me thinking, what did I miss, who else might have seen something? I asked your mom what she saw that day, and she admitted that she was out in the carriage house with my dad. It just made me wonder if she knew something, if she had anything to do with it.”

  “Jesus.” Lauren looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I know she can be a bitch, but do you really think she could do something like that?”

  “No. I don’t know. Josh doesn’t think so.”

  Lauren fidgeted with her earrings, twisting the studs one by one like she was tuning an instrument. “Do you think we should go check it out? Just to be sure there’s nothing up there that she’s trying to hide? We should go right now, while she’s busy.”

  I shrugged. “If she had anything incriminating, she would have gotten rid of it by now.”

  “It might make
you feel better, just to look and see that there’s nothing there. And I, for one, am dying to see what kind of hideous wallpaper she’s got up there.”

  It was almost enough to make me laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be here all night.”

  She sighed. “I’ve done my duty. I smiled and shook hands and listened to everyone drone on and on about how wonderful my mother is. I think she’d probably be thrilled if I leave before I screw something up.”

  —

  The lower level of the carriage house was unfinished and unlocked, and the key to the upstairs room was hanging just inside the door, by the stairs. Either Mrs. Ferris wasn’t worried about what anyone would find up there, or she didn’t think anyone would bother to look. Lauren went in first and I crowded behind her in the dark, both of us fumbling to find the switch. She flipped on the light and let out a disappointed sigh. There was, indeed, hideous wallpaper, a migraine-inducing ikat print. Clothing racks lined the walls, shopping bags on the floor. The room looked like an overflow closet, a place to hide things she didn’t want Dr. Ferris to know she’d bought.

  Lauren kicked a giant Nordstrom bag and it tipped over, shoes spilling out. “These are old,” she said, shoving the bag aside and surveying the room. “Maybe this is all the stuff she’s saving to take to Goodwill. I wonder if she’d notice if I took a few things and sold them on eBay.”

  I wasn’t looking at the shoes or the clothes. I was eyeing the red metal step stool, which looked exactly like the one my grammy had in her kitchen at the Sister House. I waded around bags of Mrs. Ferris’s discarded clothing to get to it. Sitting on top of the stool was Grammy’s sewing basket, and inside the basket, her tomato pincushion, her seam ripper, her good fabric shears, and a little cellophane package of duck-shaped buttons, still bright yellow, four remaining from a package of ten.